Hello and welcome to WORDTheatre Weekly: The Short Story Podcast where great authors and actors meet! I’m your host, Cedering Fox, WORDTheatre's Founder & Artistic Director.
Last week, we featured Cassidy Freeman’s performance of Pamela Painter’s “Just This,” which she read live at the first event in our NYC 2025 Author • Actor Series, sponsored by Phiphen Studios Post NJ. This week’s episode features the other performance from that evening: Carla Gugino, she performed, “Old Crimes,” the titular story from author Jill McCorkle’s newest collection.
We are excited to announce that we’ll be back in Manhattan on Wednesday, May 7th to present a celebration of author John Edgar Wideman's work. We will feature performances of his stories, accompanied by a three-piece jazz band, followed by a conversation between Mr. Wideman and author David Means. For more information, and to purchase tickets when they become available, check out our website, WORDTheatre.org.

Please note that WORDTheatre holds the copyright to these recordings and no portion of anything you hear on WORDTheatre Weekly, our short story podcast may be reproduced without permission.
To introduce “Old Crimes” and Carla’s reading, here is New York Times bestselling author and another of WORDTheatre's favorites, Jill McCorkle. Jill is the author of 5 short story collections and 6 novels, and whose work has been featured in The Atlantic and Ploughshares. Plus she led our writers Workshop a couple of years ago, in France!

JILL INTRODUCES THE STORY

THE STORY PLAYS

We hope you have enjoyed Carla Gugino's performance of "Old Crimes" by Jill McCorkle. If you'd like to pick up books by the authors that you are hearing, please visit Bookshop.org and you will be helping two non-profits! WORDTheatre has a full calendar of live events in 2025 - from our intimate Author•Actor series to our largest of large-scale productions to date, there's something for every literary lover to enjoy LIVE if you find yourself near LA, NY or LONDON! Just visit our websites, wordtheatre.org and wordtheatreuk.org, to find out more. If you sign up to become a Patron or Enthusiast Member, you will be able to watch recordings of all our LIVE events from the comfort of home. Supporting the arts has never been more imperative, and we could use all the support we can get so that we can continue to offer this free podcast ad-free. Not to mention, we have a very robust program in schools where we offer gratis performances and we hope you'll support those.

On behalf of Kirsty Peart, my UK producing partner, and myself, we'd like to thank Philanthropist/Benefactor, Ola Strom, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Randy & Jane Sinisi and Phiphen Studios | Post NJ, our podcast editor, Maya Johnson and our entire hard working staff at WORDTheatre. Thank you for listening. Until next week, this is Cedering Fox signing off!